The Local: Comic book heroes

Harry Potter: This Really Is The Last One has just been released. I haven’t read it yet (girlfriend has shotgun) but it is brilliant. For Harry Potter not to be would mean the world had come to an end or that JK Rowling had gone bankrupt or something. I was going to write all about Harry, but not even I will write about a book I haven’t read yet which, let me tell you, is saying something.

So I’d like to deal with some other great British superheroes of a literary and visual nature. Beginning with a comic book starring a certain John Constantine.

Now let’s clear this up right now: the movie, brilliant as it was, got a lot of things wrong. Firstly, Constantine is not a dark-haired, brooding, Keanu Reeves lookalike. He’s a sarky blond bastard who’s as happy swigging a pint as he is banishing demons.

Secondly, he’s not from LA. He’s from Liverpool.

It came as quite a shock to me that John Constantine — possibly one of the hardest comic book heroes ever — is entirely British, bar certain liberal Hollywood contrivances. He was created by a guy named Alan Moore, a man living in Central England who has the most extravagant facial hair I have ever seen (we’re talking Amazon rainforest levels here). He is one of the godfathers of the British comic book industry. Yes, there is a comic book industry here, and it is absolutely knockdown brilliant.

We’ll stick with Moore because he created some of the comics the British industry is known for. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen for example — only in Britain could you team up Alan Quatermain, the Invisible Man, Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, Mina Harker and the brilliant Captain Nemo and his Nautilus. Moore also penned V for Vendetta — and then scratched his name from the credits of the movie in protest, which was a pity as it was quite good. He’s also done Tom Strong, the Watchmen, Swamp Thing…

Of course, Moore is just the start. It’s stupid to go into all this without acknowledging artists like Chris Sprouse, Shawn McManus and Karl Story, among rather a lot of equally illustrious others, and writers like Leah Moore and Mat Johnson. And then there’s this chap Neil Gaiman, who’s not really a comic book person but that’s OK since he’s God.

I wish to take nothing away from the superb US comics industry, but comics from the rainy isle seem to get it right in a way I never thought possible. They seem to capture raw emotion and fantastical imagination in a way Spiderman and Superman and Batman never could. Perhaps I’m being unfair; but it’s hard not to read them without a sense of sheer amazement.

I mean, take Constantine: not only does he get the devil to drink holy water disguised as Guinness, but he gets the old fallen angel to cure his lung cancer as payment. Keanu could never get that right, that’s for sure.